My poem for this painting:

It begins so gently you could almost miss it.
A subtle turning.
A softening of what once felt fixed.
The first small evidence that the secret dream you have carried within you is beginning to gather form.

Not because the path is clear.
Not because every fear has fallen away.
But because something in you has stopped arguing with what your soul knows.

You find yourself choosing differently now.
Speaking more carefully.
Leaving certain things behind without needing to explain or justify it.

And then — the green shoots start to appear.

A door opens that you didn't push.
A conversation lands differently than it would have before.
Someone sees you the way you are only just learning to see yourself.

Small confirmations.
Quiet arrivals.
The world beginning to meet what you've been quietly becoming.

Even hope has changed its nature.
It is no longer fantasy.
It has weight.
Contour.
Consequence.

And though nothing has fully arrived, everything has begun.

This is how becoming starts — not in a blaze,
but in a series of small steps and quiet recognitions.
Not in the dream alone anymore,
but in the first tender evidence that the dream is finding its way into the world.